For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment In America Today

Author:

Jedediah Purdy

Publisher:

Knopf

“Americans who came of age after 1974,” writes Jedediah Purdy, “have never seen the government undertake a large-scale project other than highway maintenance and small wars, and relatively few are inspired by the idea that it should.” Not
only is Purdy inspired, but this impressive first book, penned when he was 24, articulates a conceptual groundwork for renewed commitment in American public life.

Stylistically anchored by essayists such as Thoreau, Emerson, and Montaigne, Purdy takes the reader on a topographical tour of the American political psyche, navigating around two touchstone issues: the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and strip-mining
in his native West Virginian hills. Dedication to “commons” — shared interests whose maintenance requires mutual support (such as the environment) — is a powerful refrain. His pragmatism is refreshing, his line of argument lucid.

For Common Things contains a fascinating evaluation of private life and freedom, updating Alexis de Tocqueville with chilling urgency. “[A]nything that individuals could not accomplish in solitude would fall to bureaucrats.
Americans would forget how to govern themselves. They would forget how to be free.” This is strong work. Least fruitful, however, are Purdy's outcries against irony.

Purdy shines — even allowing some irony into the cracks — when he speaks of self-serving politicians, dedicated dissidents, the grim facts of strip-mining, and Americans' well-fed unawareness of our individualism's true cost. For Common Things offers lessons in the extraction of hope from a weary, wry world, a hope tempered with terse pragmatism and edged by love.